Skip Williamson was one of the original underground comic artists.
Skiprevealed he had done ad work in Chicago while LSD was still legal and used to inspire ad art. He came up with a sun that wants to be a raisin.
That commercial inspired the sun I have used as a logo ever since.
Here’s Skip’s view of Decatur.
Saved from the Expressway, BOND neighborhoods flourished and Little Five Points or L5P became counter-culture downtown for a while. Patti Kakes Kunkle ran Identified Flying Objects with husband John David, both of whom were Frisbee Grand Masters. Their shop carried Grateful Dead and tie-dye items plus lots od discs for disc golf and frisbee plus kites and anything that flew. Patti knows EVERYONE in L5P and was unanimously named The Queen of Little Five Points.
Every Halloween L5P has a big parade to let the collective freak flags fly. You can see videos of them on youtube under the Queen of Little Five Points
2019 meet-the-generation-of-atlantans-who-helped-make-little-five-points-what-it-is-today
Bass Organization for Neighborhood Development was behind the rise of Inman Park, Little Five Points, Candler Park, Lake Claire. This organization created a cornerstone on which to get power from co-operative financing. Keep your money working inside your community.
How many communities have their own local radio station? I have to admit I thought neighbor Pig Iron aka Joe Shifalo had lost it when he asked me to sign with my 3rd class radio license to help get approval for a neighborhood radio station. But he and others made it happen and continue these many years later. Listen on the internet.
http://www.atlantaprogressivenews.com/news/0082.html
Radio Free Georgia originated as a 10-watt station operating from Little Five Points starting in 1973.
“WRFG grew out of the movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s,” Gray said. “The early founders could have started a newspaper but they chose instead to create a radio station,” in part because of the emergence of The Great Speckled Bird. “The station is a tool to implement ideas.”
The Great Speckled Bird ran the first news article about WRFG years ago and was instrumental in helping with its founding, one of WRFG’s original founders, Harlon Joye told Heather Gray, according to an interview transcript obtained by Atlanta Progressive News.
Similar to the Great Speckled Bird, WRFG’s founders say they were subject to police harassment and spying, the transcript says. WRFG was seen as a center of radicalism in Atlanta.
WRFG was one of the only progressive radio stations in the United States at the time, Joye told Heather Gray, in addition to a few Pacifica stations and a few independent ones.
Grassroots efforts, improvisation of an antenna involving trips to Radio Shack, and shoestring budgets were reportedly involved.
The National Endowment for the Humanities gave WRFG a grant in the 1970s and the station has not looked back. “In the Deep South…we’re it,” Gray told Atlanta Progressive News. “We’re the only station that has public affairs and music [and] we take our position seriously.”
WRFG produced a 50 part series between 1977 and 1980 called “Living Atlanta!” that won national awards. The University of Georgia Press published a book in 1989 based on the series.
The station’s contribution in the musical field is significant as well. It became the first radio station in Atlanta since the 1950s to feature blues, bluegrass, and jazz; musical forms native to the region.
WRFG has a smorgasbord of music, something for everyone, and many programs are geared toward Atlanta’s ever growing Latin, Asian, Caribbean, and African communities. “We play the leading role in providing opportunities for hip-hop,” Gray said.
In 1995, WRFG reached its goal of operating at 100,000 watts. The next year, the station took its show on the road, going to Dublin to broadcast the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and Jamaica, where the first World Party Tour occurred.
Today, WRFG continues to give a voice to people who traditionally are denied access to broadcast media. “We have to [continue] to make sure we have access to progressive opportunities,” Gray said.
Atlanta Progressive News Staff Writers have been on WRFG’s progressive news hour each week for the last couple months. News Editor Matthew Cardinale, and Staff Writers Jonathan Springston, Betty Clermont, and Kristina Cates have each discussed their latest news items recently on Adam Shapiro’s “Current Events” program, Thursdays at noon.
Everyone can help WRFG continue their progressive legacy by visiting WRFG.org, donating money, and learning more about the Tower of Power Campaign.
About the author:
Jonathan Springston is a Staff Writer for Atlanta Progressive News. He may be reached at jonathan@atlantaprogressivenews.com.
Now The Carter Center is a good neighbor. It was not so at first. It fell in with a bad crowd–developers.
A Highway to connect with the Stone Mountain expressway was supposedly essential to the planned center, even if it caused Colony Square-style destruction of several communities for the gain of a few. “Fool me once…” Civil disobedience experience was called into action to save our homes and neighborhoods.
It succeeded. The highway was recalled eventually and all see the center flourishes as do the neighborhoods. Thank you RoadBusters for Little Five Points!
Song protesting the proposed Carter Expressway. When you drive by and see it end at Moreland, that is a victory for the citizens.
See Ron Curren of Hittin The Note’s photos of a Macon Allman Brothers expedition to visit Kirk West. The Big House is a must visit for Allman fans.
An homage – David Michaelson above, L-R below – MysterE, Bill Hardin, Ron Currens and Joe Bell from Hittin the Note.
In 1970 Dekalb County’s Columbia High School signed a contract for a local band some students said were amazing. Soon after their live album ‘At Fillmore East’ made them super stars. The Allman Brothers showed their stuff and honored the contract to play their prom in the gym. A prom to brag about for years. Dekalb Police had to call in Ga State troopers to help handle gate crashers. Mark (David) Chapman was a 9th grader; later he would gain infamy by killing John Lennon.
Thanks to David Turner for improved print of Duane ‘s first cover shot for The Bird.
Love that STP shirt (save the park, stop the police)
Ode to Dock Ellis
The recently deceased Dock Ellis is famous for pitching a no-hitter while tripping his balls off. There’s actually a song written about the incident.
Dock Ellis’s No-No
It was a lovely summer’s morning
An off-day in LA
So thought one Dock Ellis
As he would later say
His girlfriend read the paper
She said, “Dock, this can’t be right…
It says here that you’re pitching
In San Diego tonight”
“Got to get you to the airport”
And so off Dock Ellis flew
His legs were a little bit wobbly
And the rest of him was too
Took a taxi to the ballpark
An hour before the game
Gave some half-assed explanation
Found the locker with his name
Time came to go on out there
Down the corridor
The walls were a little bit wavy
There were ripples in the floor
He went out to the bullpen
To do a bunch of stretches
Loosen up a little
Throw his warm-up pitches
All rose for the national anthem
People took off their hats
Fireworks were exploding
The cokes were already going flat
Dock was back there in the dugout
So many things to watch
Some players spit tobacco juice
Others grabbed their crotch
The umpire hollered, “Play Ball!”
And so it came to be
Dock’s Pirates batted first
And when they went down 1-2-3
Dock’s catcher put his mask on
And he handed Dock the ball
It was 327 feet
To the right & left field walls
The Pirates took the field then
And Dock stood on the rubber
He bounced a couple of pitches
And then he bounced a couple others
You might say about that day
He looked a little wild
The lead-off batter trembled
Nobody knew why…Dock Ellis smiled
You walk 8 and you hit a guy
The things that people shout…
Especially your manager
But he didn’t take Dock out
Dock found himself a rythym
And a crazy little spin
Amazing things would happen
When Dock Ellis zeroed in
Sometimes he saw the catcher
Sometimes he did not
Sometimes he held a beach balll
Other times it was a dot
Dock was tossing comets
That were leaving trails of glitter
At the 7th inning stretch
He still had a no-hitter
So he turned to Cash, his buddy
Said, “I got a no-no going”
Speaking the unspeakable
He went back out there throwing
Bottom of the ninth
& He stood high upon the mound
3 more outs to go
He’d have his name in Cooperstown
First up was Cannizzaro
Who flied out to Alou
Kelly grounded out for Dean
The shortstop yelled, “That’s two”
It must’ve been a mad house
The fans upon their feet
The littler ones among them
Standing on their seats
Next up would’ve been Herbel
But Spezio pinch-hit
He took a 3rd strike looking
And officially, that was it
It was a lovely summer’s morning
An off-day in LA
So thought one Dock Ellis
As he would later say
PAGE 14A DeKALB NEW ERA WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1972
Harrison Tells Why He Supports McGovern
Two, prominent DeKatb County citizens – Clark Harrison and former Congressman James A. Mackay – have publicly endorsed the Presidential candidacy of Sen. George McGovern.
In last week’s issue of the DeKalb News, Mr. Mackey, a Decatur attorney and former U.S. Congressman, emphasized his support for the Democratic candidate, and closed with the comment that “Senator McGovern is simply asking us to be something different than a modern, militaristic Rome.”
Clark Harrison, the out-going Chairman of the Dekalb County Board of Commissioners, is the head of the Dekalb drive to elect Senator McGovern.
Here, in an assessment of his desire to see George McGovern elected, dark Harrison speaks candidly about war, patriotism and the economy of a nation.
By CLARK HARRISON
My endorsement of George McGovern for President is based on personal conviction that goes back many years.
I was in a hospital in England in 1944 when President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill made their historic demand for the ‘unconditional surrender of Nazi Ger-.any and Imperial Japan. I felt strongly at the time, and since that this unnecessary political statement cost the lives of young Americans.
Since I was wounded in combat, I have always felt strongly about the political use of patriotism of our young men. Historians have confirmed the feeling I had at the time about the ‘unconditional surrender’ statement, and I believe they will confirm the feelings many have today that the Viet Nam War, and the Presidential visits to Red China and Russia, have been used in a ‘political effort by President Nixon to assure his re-election in 1972.
The tragedy of this day is the fact that alter four more war years under Nixon, we can no better control the internal situation in Viet Nam than we could have when Richard Nixon took office in 1969 – and 20,000 young Americans have been killed in action in the intervening years.
1 am convinced we can stay in Viet Nam another 10 years and the final situation in that unhappy country will not be substantially improved.
We are told today that the only reason we do not totally withdraw, now, is because of our prisoners of war – and yet, there are 550 more Americans held prisoner in Viet Nam today than in 1969. And, every day, American men fly over North Viet Nam, and are exposed to capture or death.
President Nixon sold one-fourth of the U.S. wheat crop to Russia in a deal they have sought for years—and did not secure the release of a single American prisoner.
*** Domestically, the Viet Nam War has been used to silence critics of what has been the most disastrous administration of this century.
The disaster of the Nixon Administration has been that our involvement in a war we cannot win has been continued at great expenditure of this nation’s wealth, and without a corresponding tightening of our civilian belts.
We have, in effect, been told that we can have ‘guns and butter,’ and the result has been disaster to our economy with the bill paid in inflation, devaluation of the dollar, a stock crash that cost the small investor literally billions, and an unprecedented high in unemployment.
The price of the Nixon Administration has been paid by the youth of America, by the wage earner, whose income has been fixed, and by the elderly.
The most alarming development is the apparent intent of the Nixon administration to continue these policies for another four years.
I have always been proud that I could serve my country in combat in World War II. I hope today, that whatever influence I may have will be on the side of preserving the ideals that made this country worthy of the sacrifice of our young men.
At the moment, that means, for me, voting for George McGovern.
Segregation and Communism were the big scares for the tiny boxes people. Political demagogues wrapped themselves in the flag and their version of The Bible to defend their hatred, much as they have in 2013 with sexual variants. The same Bible quotes against segregation are trotted out against gays, or anyone else that threatens their power to manipulate with fear.
One of the most successful was George Wallace. George Wallace Comic documents their hatred. It can help people today understand what a uniquely uphill struggle hips had in the South to even reach the level above meeting any change with violence.
Georgia had a slick copy in Lester Maddox, who embarrassingly was elected Georgia Governor. He created a group of vigilantes. Could members of the Governor’s committee be the reason firebombings of troublesome Civil Rights and Counter Culture buildings around Atlanta never seemed to get solved or sometimes even investigated? makes you go, “hoomm?”
Remember Lester Maddox had been elected Governor because he was a segregationist given to violence. He was nationally known for having threatened any “colored” people who would come to his restaurant. His other talent was riding a bicycle backwards in parades. Really.
Clark Harrison, Jr. was my uncle. He was the first WWII paraplegic to leave the VA hospital and live. He learned to fly his own plane and published his autobiography after being chairman of Dekalb County Commissioners. Taking this stand was considered crazy at the time, but was inspiring to me. The best politician I ever knew.
This stand earned him the emnity of forces who published the attack sheet attempting to link him with The Bird and obscenity. ”
“Not too long after the BIRD got started, a phantom group called the Dekalb Parents League for Decency initiated a campaign that at first glance appeared to be directed against the BIRD. Various unsuspecting churchgoers and upstanding citizens of DeKalh County received a handbill through the mail in the Fall of 1968 condemning the Dekalb New Era (the governmental organ of Dekalb County), for printing the BIRD on their equipment. The handbill was composed of clippings from the BIRD with certain “nasty” words underlined in pen. The group purported to be disturbed by the “sacrilege, pornography, depravity, immorality, and draft dodging which are preached in The Great Speckled Bird.” The immediate effect was to intimidate the New Era so that it no longer would print the BIRD. However, it seems that since the New Era supported [mystere2’s uncle] Clark Harrison’s campaign for County Commissioner, some astute political observers determined the handbill was a smear sheet against the Harrison campaign. Unethical political practices are infra-party affairs, perhaps, but state law prohibits the distribution of unsigned political material. The Dekalb Parents League for Decency somehow “failed” to include anyone’s name. The GBI, postal authorities, and the county sheriffs office got hot.
But when the investigations led to the Decatur courthouse and it looked like there was a possibility that high Democratic Party officials in Dekalb County were involved, all of a sudden they decided to investigate the BIRD for “obscenity!” (Especially since it might have been put together in the Dekalb County Courthouse using Dekalb County employees on Dekalb County time, possibly involving the County Commissioner himself— Brince Manning.)” from 1968-1975 “Printing the news you’re not suppose to know….”
Uncle Clark took it as badge of success to get bigots so riled.
Harrison Tells Why He Supports McGovern from Dekalb New Era
It is amazing to see what we DID accomplish with the US government working so hard to defeat any changes in society. COINTELPPRO was very active in Georgia because of Fort Benning and its still secret training areas.
The Vietnam War’s shadow affected everything. Flunking a test, or a lottery could send you off to war. People returning to the Real World found it hard to believe, petty, and self-absorbed. Many were physical, emotional, or psychological shells of what they had been before.
For a history of the events of Vietnam look here:
http://www.leatherneck.com/forums/archive/index.phpt-1018.htmlVietnam
What concerned the various sectors of the United States ruling elites in regard to SNCC’s position against the draft and the war in Viet Nam was that the organization was actively challenging the notion that Africans in America should fight in unjust wars overseas. In January of 1966, SNCC issued a detailed statement opposing the war in Viet Nam. In August of the same year there were picket lines set up outside a selective service induction center in Atlanta, Georgia by members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The demonstrations resulted in the arrest of numerous activists and drew the attention of the FBI.
In a confidential FBI report issued on September 7, 1966 entitled: “Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Stokely Carmichael”, the Bureau sought to provide a summary of recent activities of SNCC and its chairperson. Under the beginning section of the report entitled: “Picketing Activities Atlanta, Georgia,” it states that: “Since August 17, 1966, a small group of Negroes, the majority of whom are members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, have been picketing the Twelfth Corps Headquarters, Northeast, Atlanta, Georgia, protesting United States action in Vietnam and United States Negroes fighting in Vietnam. A number of these individuals have been arrested by the Atlanta Police Department and charged with various offenses ranging from disorderly conduct to assault and battery. The activities of these individuals in connection with their picketing of the Twelfth Corps Headquarters are also under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation relative to destruction of Government property and possible violations of the Selective Service Act of 1948.”
The confidential report of the FBI continues by making reference to a speech made by Carmichael on September 3, 1966 and a rebellion which erupted on September 6 in Atlanta. According to the FBI report: “A confidential source advised that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee sponsored a rally in a predominantly Negro neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 3, 1966. Stokely Carmichael made a short speech at the rally. He attacked the Atlanta Police Department on police brutality matters. According to the source, Carmichael stated Negroes should form vigilante groups to observe police and should any acts of police brutality be observed, a committee should be formed among the Negro element to follow such matters.”
After the arrest of the pickets at the Twelfth Corps Headquarters, a delegation of SNCC members including Carmichael went to the Atlanta City Hall to demand a meeting with Mayor Ivan Allen. The SNCC members asked that the Mayor release the people arrested at the induction center. The Mayor replied that it was a federal matter and was beyond the control of the city of Atlanta. Carmichael was reported to have insisted that the city do something to affect the release of the demonstrators. Nonetheless, the Mayor abruptly ended the meeting by suggesting that the delegation become registered voters in the city. SNCC later held a street rally that same day, September 6, in emergency response to the police shooting of an African-American youth who was supposedly a suspect in a car theft.
Mayor Ivan Allen, who went to the scene of the rally in an attempt to calm the growing angry crowd, was pelted with rocks and bottles while standing on top of a police car. When the crowd began to rock the police vehicle the Mayor fell off after the roof buckled under pressure. The crowd grew rapidly and began to fight police in the surrounding neighborhood of Summerhill. The Mayor sent in a thousand police officers utilizing teargas and other forms of force to quell the rebellion in Atlanta. Allen immediately blamed SNCC for the unrest in Atlanta’s Summerhill District. Carmichael had issued an appeal over radio station WAOK asking that people come to the sight of the shooting of the youth by the police. The first two people arrested on the scene were SNCC members Bill Ware and Robert Walton for inviting people to broadcast their eyewitness accounts of the shooting by the Atlanta police over a loudspeaker.
Two days later Carmichael was arrested and charged with incitement to riot. On that same day another disturbance erupted in the Boulevard Section of the city after a black youth was shot to death on his porch by a white parolee, who was later sentenced to life in prison the following year. Hosea Williams of SCLC then attempted to organize a demonstration in the city after the arrest of numerous SNCC members, however, he was detained himself for leading a peaceful procession in the area where the youth was gunned down on his porch. The disturbances in Atlanta gained nationwide coverage with the scene of Mayor Allen being pushed off the hood of a police car repeatedly shown over national television. Atlanta, a southern city that attempted to cultivate an image of being moderate and business-oriented, was exposed as a bastion of racism and police brutality as well as intolerance to peaceful protest and other forms of dissent.
In the same confidential FBI report mentioned above that was issued on September 7, 1966, the bureau provides its own interpretation of the events on September 6 in Atlanta. The report states that: “The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee scheduled a rally at Capital and Ordman Streets, Atlanta, Georgia, on the afternoon of September 6, 1966, in protest of the arrest and shooting of a Negro male for auto theft earlier in the day. During the rally several unidentified Negroes talked to the group in a haranguing manner. Members of the group started throwing rocks and bottles at police officers and white spectators. Ivan Allen, Jr., Mayor of Atlanta, was unsuccessful in quelling the disturbance. Several acts of violence occurred resulting in the arrest of seventy-two people by the Atlanta Police Department; however, specific charges are not known.”
Pressures mounted against SNCC throughout 1966 resulting from its positions on black power, the draft, self-defense, urban rebellion and the escalating war in Viet Nam. With the release of selected FBI documents of Stokely Carmichael since his death in 1998, the unclassified records of American intelligence and the White House have provided clearer insights into the role of not only the FBI’s Counter-intelligence Program COINTELPRO, but the direct involvement of the Johnson administration and the United States Military in efforts aimed at the destruction of the civil rights and black power movements that were in strong evidence during 1966.
Editor’s Note: The FBI documents utilized in this article can be found on the Bureau’s web site thanks to the Freedom Of Information act. The files have been divided into five parts and are published without comment or interpretation. These documents by no means represent the totality of FBI and other government agencies’ surveillance activities directed at Stokely Carmichael and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating (SNCC). However, the examination of these records illuminate the thinking of the Johnson administration, the Department of Justice, the Secret Service, local police agencies and municipal and county governments in regard their efforts designed to stifle and eliminate the civil rights and black power movements of the time period.
The New History of the Weather Underground
An entertaining and enlightening read.
From promoting semi-mythic legendary music events in 1969 at The Sports Arena at age 16, to writing about Jerry Lee’s cousin child-bride Myra, to being roadie for the Dalai Lama’s possessions on tour, Murray Silver has had an almost unbelievable life. And he tells it very interestingly. A book blurb says he is,” the missing link between Tom Robbins and Carlos Castenada – from Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.
http://bonaventture.com/whenelvis_desc.htm
Good friends and helpers of the project. Great store for craft and art.
Voices from the Farm: Adventures in Community Living (Paperback)
by Rupert Fike
Really interesting story about folks who didn’t just dream about going back to the land and creating a peaceful community. Yaah Rupert, all the way from 13th St. Workshop in Non-Violence.
Hey Patrick,
Thanks for reading my book. I looked over your web site and it looks as if you are doing interesting stuff out there. I was in Georgia in the last 60s and I remember how long hair meant something there it never meant in California or outside the South. The brotherhood was real and the danger was real.
Anyway, thank you. Tim Sandlin
Haynes McFadden Tells about Atlanta’s first light show.
Haynes McFadden on color experiments.
Haynes McFadden on the Electric Collage
Haynes McFadden on experimentation of the time.
Bucky Weatherill on light shows – complete Bucky interview